Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Monday December 08, 2008 @12:43PM
from the that-would-stimulate-me dept.

damn_registrars writes "President-elect Barack Obama announced in his radio address that his administration's economic stimulus package will include investing in computers and broadband for education. 'To help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools.'
He also said it is 'unacceptable' that the US ranks 15th in broadband adoption." No doubt with free spyware and internet filtering. You know... for the kids.

You can't pay money to Intel, AMD, ATI, Dell or Microsoft without buying some hardware to Asian manufacturers because this is their business model to have manufactures in Asia. In today's world, it is hard to stimulate one country's economy without stimulating another one. There are some fields where it is possible (construction, restaurants...) but most are tied to foreign manufacturers.

Note that if giving job to China is an issue, one could prefer Taiwanese makers. I believe the difference is more important than it seems : one is a democracy, the other is not.

"One country two systems" has been proposed by China for Taiwan. The Taiwanese - having had de-facto independence for over 50 years - would prefer to stay independent, rather than being someone's colony again. (It's described in the link you gave, btw.)

almost all construction and restaurant jobs are held by illegal immigrants, who send most of the money home to Mexico

Most? Really? I don't think so... An immigrant construction worker I read about recently (in Economist, I think), was making $1000 per week, sending $600 per month to his wife and children back home. Hardly "most".

(Because of the economic downturn, according to the article, the guy's last transfer was only $100.)

A lot of the kids i went to high school with dropped out of school to take up jobs in construction with their parents (whom are only legal since their kids were born here) and typically sent back half of their income to their families across the border. One 16 year old kid i knew was on our track team and worked whatever the maximum number of hours a week you can at that age, and sent all but $100 a week (also about 50%) back to his family. $1000/wk for construction seems a little high. I know drywallers get paid about $20 an hour to do out of town work (dallas to san antonio) but $1000 a week? That seems a little high, is he a bilingual foreman or something? $600 a month may be all they can afford to send after rent, car payment, and gas for their truck (though gas prices have dropped recently). That's still $7,200 a year, plus whatever he spends in mexico while visiting family and buying them gifts there. Sorry to substantiate using my real life experience vs. your article you read in a magazine.

Because US workers are way, wayyy more expensive.This is of course, because they have a higher living standard.And it it because of that crazy system, where everybody has to have as much loans as possible.

And most of all, it is, because neither customers nor companies seem to act on anything other than (very) short-term profit maximization.I think, anyone who thinks and acts in the long term nowadays, will rule them all in the future.

The worst thought is, that I once heard some expert say, that China is a slow giant, that does think in terms of 50 to 100 years. And that they don't care about the highs or lows of today.

You do realize that a 700 billion bailout divided by 300 million people is still only $2,333 per person in the US? Even assuming that were only to be spread over a quarter or so of the total population, the absolute maximum you're talking about is $10,000.

And quite frankly, I think US taxpayers are, by and large, morons. Giving every adult US citizen $10,000 might alleviate some temporary debt problems, but it's likely to cause at least as many problems as it solves, and will have little long-term benefit.

I think that bailouts of failing industries are equally stupid. What needs to happen is investment in business models and industries that are sustainable in the long term and will make the US more competitive globally. Given the way in which our world is moving, universal computer literacy and national fast broadband are two things which very definitely need to happen to keep the United States competitive in the world.

I know your suggestion feels good in your gut, but it won't work very well.

Tax refunds do not stimulate the economy. People either save the tax dollars or they pay of debts.

Infrastructure spending, as suggested by the Obama team, stimulates the economy by paying people who are unemployed at this time to repair roads and schools and lay new broadband fiber-optic cable. Those people take those new paychecks to the grocery store, Wally-World, and even local establshments such as ice-cream parlors and pizza restaurants to give their kids a treat. This money in the local economy encourages those stores to stock their shelves with more items. If this happens across the country, manufacturers, both local and international, start to ramp up production. Hell, they might even invest in new technology to reduce their production costs or to beat a competitor to market. That is what is meant by economic stimulation. That is what Obama wants.

The government does not have the solution. It is the problem. In the old days, back before the introduction of the Federal Reserve, stock market crashes happened on a regular basis, but nobody ran around for the next decade crying about it. The market just purged itself of bad assets and risky practices and recovered in a few months. The Great Depression was caused by Benjamin Strong's fiddly experimentation with his brand-new central bank and his scheming with European investors (Google benjamin strong Britain gold). The Fed overheated the economy for too long and then cooled it down too fast. It was made even worse by the explosive tax burden FDR introduced. (See Bernanke's admission of Fed guilt on Friedman's 90th birthday.)

Nowadays, we make it far, far worse by trying to prevent the bad assets and insolvent businesses from failing by sucking solvent (good) assets out of the economy to prop up the insolvent (bad). The real solution is to simply let them fail. The Big Three auto mfgs. are in an impossible situation. They promised via union contracts to pay all their employees a comfortable sum for the rest of their lives. This is something that they simply cannot afford to do. What's the solution? Just let the company fail and the contracts dissolve. Someone else will buy the property and machines and start the company over.

Now, it's true that this will be hard for those employees who were supposed to be taken care of, but unfortunately life isn't fair (my mother's favorite saying). The Bill of Rights does not guarantee happiness, only the right to pursue it (Google obama's bill of rights).

If you really want to bail out struggling industries, try deregulating and cutting taxes. Now, I agree that some regulation is needed, but too much of it is just feel-good paperwork. The regulations that especially need to go are the ones regarding employment. I, as a high school student, ought to be able to go and flip burgers for a pittance. (Hey, I've an idea! Let's require computer techs to be licensed before they can run helpdesks or do house calls! That way we make sure people don't pay for bad work!) I also ought to be able to go and install a floor, furnace or pipe in someone's house, if they're willing to pay me. If I kill myself it's my own fault.

If you want a better economy, get the government off of it. We used to have the best economy in the world. Somehow we've come to think that government as god is better. It isn't, and it never will be. Even if someone hopes we can.

Did you miss the (rather conspicuous) use of the word "broadband"? Our network infrastructure sucks quite badly, and if he's talking about upgrading it, that's a lot of domestic blue-collar jobs.

If POBE is really serious, he'll look at giving us real broadband, like the premises fibre that Korean consumers enjoy. If he does that, Corning will have to de-mothball a factory or two, and a lot of people will be needed to dig ditches and pull cable. Sounds pretty stimulating to me.

By JUST redoing the bandwidth, we'll probably duplicate efforts later pulling up roads to run wire, etc. Reminds me of a story a friend told me about a town redoing main street. They had a big plan and sent out info to all of the companies with pipes/lines under it. They said if they needed to replace anything, do it now or if they need to replace it before X years, they would foot the entire bill. The center of town got a ton of new fiber, etc.

I think Bailout and any bailout money we were going to give the Big 3 and rebuild Americas' infrastructure. Bridges, Dams, Power lines, roads. Quite a bit of stuff was built during the great depression putting people to work. After the MN bridge collapse inspectors are coming out of the wood work going "Yeah, these could fail at any time now too."

Take all those 2.9M employees that are out of work and have them start building shiat. If they want to sit on their Union ass and do nothing, they get nothing. Turn off unemployment. There'll be no shortage of jobs. Pay them what they're actually worth as manual labor. Caterpillar & Deere, the big 2 domestic construction manufacturers would need to increase their workforce (Which is partially union). Truckers would get more work shipping construction supplies and equipment. Mobile home makers would need to up production for temporary housing. Concrete, asphalt, and steel industries would need to up employment to help keep up with demand.

Along every road and every bridge run fiber, it costs nothing compared to what a new road does, so run a fat pipe to every town in America. The next Wozniak or Linus could be sitting at a place that currently just has 14.4 dial up. Maybe the smartest of the high school students could take part in remote learning at MIT or some where where they'll not be kept behind with the rest of their class.

In addition, toss a rail line down the center of the interstates. Get a light rail connecting most large cities. Maybe even a 'ferry' service. Need to go to CA? Load your car up on a rail. Go sit in the comfortable seats and in a day. You're in CA.

Just like all those roads and bridges helped spark the auto boom a decade or so later, in 10-20 years we could really see the economy back on its feet doing something else productive.

Spoken like a person who has never driven across the United States. There are regions where you can drive for miles and never see anything except a couple random cows grazing. Comparing this 2500-mile wide federation versus a small country no bigger than Delaware makes ZERO sense. It's like comparing a pumpkin versus a pea... totally illogical.

First, I have driven many times across the US, and while there are huge regions where there's nothing, that's a complete and total red herring with regards to broadband deployment. The only thing those empty regions need is a big fat backbone crossing them to connect the population centers on either side. And our backbone is fine. A lot of it is lying dark simply because it isn't needed, so there's extra capacity there in case we ever fix the situation in the population centers. So the issue of us being a 2500-mile-wide federation is already solved.

Second, we do have sections of the country where the area is as small and the density as high as whatever country you're thinking of, so then what's the excuse? Look at New York City. Here we have 20,000,000 people close enough together that the "wide federation" argument is completely irrelevant, yet still solely considering NYC broadband is pathetic compared to other countries. How could that possibly not be a big enough market? How could the size of the United States possibly be a reason for anemic broadband in New York? Or LA? Or Houston, Dallas, Chicago, and so on and so on.

No. Country size or overall density is not the reason our broadband sucks. Because even when all those factors are resolved, it still sucks.

You know that saying about lies, damn lies, and statistics? This is an example of lying with statistics. The United States is not some podunk little nation like Korea, but a continent-spanning nation that takes 3 days to drive across, and therefore it makes sense to compare like-to-like:

The U.S. is only slightly behind its Russian/European neighbors, and significantly ahead of its Canadian, Australian, and Chinese neighbors. That is not a bad position to be. By the way I got these stats from speedtest.net which is based upon actual measurement of the users, and therefore not distorted.

he United States is not some podunk little nation like Korea, but a continent-spanning nation that takes 3 days to drive across,

Which is exactly why it makes sense to have the government work on a broadband project. A similar thing happened with electricity and phones. It wasn't viable for businesses to install the lines so the government took over and installed them out to the remote countryside.

I hope the power grid gets reworked in all of the stimulus, we need that a lot. But having higher broadband p

I think the government interference with electricity/phones was a mistake.... Electricity had already reached 95% of the population by the 1930s. There was no need for that corporate welfare. (I detest corporate welfare.)

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was created in 1933 and is the largest producer of electricity in the United States today.Not only that, but the TVA also has some of the cheapest and most reliable power too.

/Unfortunately, most of their electricity is from coal

Politicians often create a problem that either (a) doesn't exist or (b) used to exist but has already been solved via the free market.

What free market are you talking about?Because if we're discussing telecoms and broadband, then the subject is a regulated and subsidized oligopoly, not a 'free' market.

Entrenched business interests have been doing their damnedest since the 1920s and '30s to keep the government from ruining their gravy train.

You imply you know that saying, but then proceed to ignore it. Speedtest.net is nice, but what does it have to do with broadband adoption? Furthermore it is unreliable as an indicator of average speeds in a country, since the sample is self-selecting: only people who are interested in their speed will measure it, which would more likely be people with high-speed connections.

Well, despite being an Obama supporter (as am I), Taco is being pragmatic. Eric Holden could be his Attorney General, and he's all for net censorship. Plus this is the Democrats we're talking about; the old guard is salivating at the prospect of getting all their old nanny state legislation back on the plate.

Short answer: We can't. We can't really afford anything at this juncture.

Long answer: We can. There are certain things that private industry absolutely sucks at doing. This is simply the federal government stepping in to do for itself what it should've done a long time ago.

I agree that the bailout sucks, though it seems like a necessary evil at this point. (If the banking system fails, we're really fucked.) Instead, try blaming the people who made the whole thing necessary in the first place.

It is a fallacy that you need computers in schools. Teach the kids reading, writing and math skills, the rest can come later. Computers are a drain on schools with already tight budgets.
We went to moon with engineers and scientists who did not have computers.

IMO, this is exactly the issue. We should figure out our education problem before we spend money and put more distractions into the schools. Yes, distractions. If you can't READ and you graduate from high school, having a computer isn't going to help you. And, by the way, paying a bureaucratic school system more money isn't going to help education either. Nor is making homeschooling illegal (California has been trying for a long time), making it harder for private schools, putting even more emphasis on

The exact issue is that the school system is modeled after the one room schoolhouse. The entire concept of grades K-12 needs to be thrown out, and instead just have each student advance in each subject at his/her own pace. In this way, a student who is good in English but needs math help does not get held back or even looked at strangely.

Every student will have strengths and weaknesses, so it should be the norm to be several "grades" higher in one or two subjects, and possibly one or two grades lower in one or two subjects. When there is no stigma to having difficulty with a given subject, students will no longer have to hide the fact, and their needs can be addressed.

With this sort of system, the school system can finally improve. Throwing more money at a system that is clearly broken will not help, but replacing the system with something that will work and then moving students into that new system WOULD.

It is a sad thing when most people are more willing to replace an old but working computer than they are to replace a clearly broken system. The same applies to Social Security, health care, and everything else. Everyone keeps trying to fix something that is broken beyond repair instead of trying to figure out what to replace these old broken systems with.

Right, but they also had a much richer school environment. They did not have to suffer through this back to basics, three R's crap that started in the 80's. Creative problem solving, critical thinking, you don't get that with a 'stick to the reading writing and math' regimen.

When I grew up in the 70's we were always told the Japanese will never be as innovative as we are, in part, because their schools did not teach kids to think creatively while ours did.

Now, after 25 years of budget cuts and "back to basics" we have to import skilled people because not enough Americans want to be engineers. Am I the only one that looks at that whole picture and thinks "well no shit, look what you did to the schools..."

We used to DREAM of having three letters. When I went to school, we only had one letter, and we only used that on exam days. Every other day, we drew pictures on the ceiling with our bloody toes, which we had to gnaw off ourselves.

Computers in schools have been a colossal waste of money. In the 'computer lab' you spend years upon years 'learning Word' and typing. In the classrooms, teachers don't know what to do with the systems so they sit there, the faculty to scared to touch them.

The school system is broken, throwing magical boxes at the problem won't fix it.

That's not a problem with computers in schools, that's a problem with the teaching syllabus. All too often, the computer classes are just passed off onto general teachers who have, at most, some worthless Microsoft Certificate in Word 97.

If we taught them more about proper usage of computers, such as basic maintenance (defrag, virus scan, etc.), emails (And the dangers of random attachments), etc. we'd probably save billions on tech support costs just a few short years down the line. I dread to think how much money is wasted on trivial calls to the Tech support line that could have been avoided with some simple, basic knowledge such as this.

If we taught them more about proper usage of computers, such as basic maintenance (defrag, virus scan, etc.), emails (And the dangers of random attachments), etc. we'd probably save billions on tech support costs just a few short years down the line.

On the other hand, if we taught them to be less passive when it comes to acquiring and using knowledge to solve problems, we wouldn't have to teach them about system janitorial tasks that are apt to be obsolete in a few years.

For example, if you teach them to question the information they receive, to think about it critically, then you protect them not only against email scams, you protect them against future forms of scamming. Such critical thinking skills might have undesirable political consequences, I suppose.

Likewise if you teach students to take initiative in solving problems, they will be able to handle whatever the equivalent of "defragging a hard drive" is in 2050.

The way I see it, too much of school reform is focused on "things kids should know". While by in large this is a good thing, students ought to have some experience of setting the fact finding agenda themselves. I don't think everybody should get out of high school with a working knowledge of electronics, but it should be possible that any student might acquire such a knowledge in the process of pursing other educational goals.

Depends on your profession. I was fortunate to attend a school that had a computer lab that allowed me to learn how to program on my own time (my family couldn't afford a computer at home at the time).

If you come from a poor family having computers at school is a real boon. I don't think studious kids should be punished by not being allowed access to computers due to the majority not using them for educational purposes.

I also don't think the school system is broken. There's nothing stopping kids from going

Computers in schools have been a colossal waste of money. In the 'computer lab' you spend years upon years 'learning Word' and typing.

In school, using computers I learned BASIC programming, Logo, the relation between frequency and musical notes, binary arithmetic, and quite a lot else -- and that's just 4th through 6th grade, in the 1980s, without the internet (or any other kind of net.) The problem's I've seen in recent years in schools with computers is that we've vastly expanded the number of computers i

Computers in schools have been a colossal waste of money. In the 'computer lab' you spend years upon years 'learning Word' and typing. In the classrooms, teachers don't know what to do with the systems so they sit there, the faculty to scared to touch them.
The school system is broken, throwing magical boxes at the problem won't fix it.

If you have staff to afraid to touch the "magical boxes", then hire more competent staff. Damn, hire some young teachers who actually grew up with computers and tech and are proficient enough with them to at least not be afraid to USE them.

And for all you teachers sitting around dreaming about the good old days when you used to be able to use a paper gradebook instead of this "newfangled online thing", wake up. You need to learn to use technology just as bad as your students. If you refuse, then don't be surprised when you get replaced by someone who is willing to adapt.

As for computers, even as a CS major we used shared computer labs. Most schools today already have enough PCs spread around classrooms to make a substantial computer lab or two, and any PC older than 5 years old is perfectly good for both tasks, and are being given away for free everywhere.

Agreed. My high school got brand new HP computers with new LCDs nearly every year while I was there. The entire network was locked down, no roaming accounts (yes it was all Windows), a terrible content filtering system (I disagree it is necessary! Give up already), and hardly enough space on the server for all those 'Windows Movie Maker' projects (120 GB). Half the time, students had no idea how to use WMM so they saved their work as a project, never encoded it, tried to bring it around and found out that does NOT work. The school taught no concepts which I had already learned (in this case, video encoding and what it does). Secondly, the school was a big Microsoft proponent as the classes it taught were almost all for Microsoft products, and the ONLY time they used free software was when they needed audio-editing software and could not find anything good that was cheap but also good. They chose Audacity (I give credit for this move). Schools generally do not trust free software as they do not think it will be quality software. THAT is a big problem. So they stick with licensing Windows (usually through a volume licence), Office (same as above), and all the rest of their software. What browser did the teacher have students use for what should be called 'HTML class'? IE, of course. Sure, MS gives incentives as always but parents need to understand the implications of being locked into MS software, which they never will because they have Windows at home, at work, everywhere nearly. Maybe even their phone and their console (Xbox/Xbox 360).

If it were up to me, would have been desktops (for things like multimedia) and terminals (for small tasks like web browsing and typing documents) all connected to a Linux server with a large hard drive. That is cheaper than buying new PCs every year for literally no reason (the old computers were fine, what's not is running Windows).

Also, if schools want to prevent students from running their games (EXEs), run Linux and do not install Wine.

Agreed. Simply putting a computer in a classroom has no effect. Without incorporating it's use as part of the curriculum, what is most likely to happen is that it will sit there unused. There also has to be the support in place to maintain them.

Schools teach more that just math, reading and writing...
Schools needs to teach how to use computers too... Schools educates kids how to interact as a part of society. I think adults who can type on a keyboard, have bigger issues, than those who can't write an entire sentence grammatically correct...Today, you can't even get a monkey job at a factory unless you can count and type the number of totally identical items you've produced any given day...

I've always wondered if there was some way that consumers could "get back" at the telecoms for sucking so hard.

Can someone file a class action lawsuit or something along those lines for the telecoms failing to serve the taxpayer/consumer despite being given so much aid from the government? Maybe throw in some analogy of how the banks over-sold the consumers with loans which led to a real estate crash and how the telecoms are over-selling the consumers with bandwidth which could potentially lead to an infrastructure crash. Add in a last quip about how their lazyness is what is causing the whole discussion of all protocols/websites/whatevers being equal in the idea of net neutrality and how if they just did their jobs the way they were supposed to the first time.

In grade school, we had a handful of Apple IIs (for AppleWorks, Oregeon Trail, Reader rabbit, and a few other educational titles). In high school, the library had a couple computers for the card catalog and CD-ROM encyclopedia, and there were a couple GW Basic/word processing rooms. So why do students need the internet for learning? Wikipedia is nice, but most schools are (rightfully) banning it. Instead of teaching math, should they just give out calculators and provide training for how to press the buttons on a McRegister? If people are graduating high school with a 6th grade level education, all the broadband in the world won't help them.

Instead of teaching math, should they just give out calculators and provide training for how to press the buttons on a McRegister?

No offense, but if you think that you can do Math on a calculator, your arguements for better education are kinda weakened. Calculators (yes even graphing ones) are a way to get around the tedium of simple arithmetic, a way to skip past the dark ages and get to the meat of critical, logical thinking.

I analyze water flow patterns as it relates to insurance risk for a living... a mathematical job to be sure. When calculating the trajectory of a projected river overflow, I grab my scientific calculator, and I think back in sympathy for my 4th grade self, who was tortured by moronic ciriculum focused on creating mindless times table memorization, which I could not do...

The main advantage humans have over other animals is that our history and our technology make it possible to learn in one lifetime what could not otherwise be possible in a hundred lifetimes. "Back to basics" is how humanity self-destructs. Give them a pile of computers, have them teach the teacher.

Instead of teaching math, should they just give out calculators and provide training for how to press the buttons on a McRegister?

No offense, but if you think that you can do Math on a calculator, your arguements for better education are kinda weakened. Calculators (yes even graphing ones) are a way to get around the tedium of simple arithmetic, a way to skip past the dark ages and get to the meat of critical, logical thinking.

I think that was his point. Teaching them to hit buttons on a calculator isn't math. Giving them a computer isn't learning.

If you see "educational computing" as playing Oregon Trail and using a CD-ROM encyclopedia, then I guess it is no big deal. But that assumes that students just have access to a couple of non-networked computers at the back of the room that they get to use for a couple of hours a week. That approach stopped making sense about the time the Apple II was discontinued. Real educational computing means that students use computers in every single class. In the hard sciences, they use them to do complex calculation

How many people here are truly opposed to some sort of filtering in computers in school? While the idea of some sort of imposed filter on my internet connection at home is very bothersome to me, I don't have a problem with attempts to keep inappropriate material off of computers in schools.

My biggest concern about it would be that generally the filtering systems aren't that hard to work around, so hopefully the school systems won't waste money buying into a really expensive product that ends up not working any better than a cheaper alternative.

Sure, I am fine with pornography being blocked. As long at it is actually pornography, and not "pornography" like art/planned parenthood/occult/hacking websites etc. All of which I have heard referred to as pornography for some reason..

What I am really opposed to is when they start blocking research, communication, and collaboration tools, such as wikis, chat rooms, and social networks etc.

These are the tools that successful companies in the real world use today to get stuff done, and if kids don't learn how to use these tools today, how are they going to be able to learn to effectively use the next generation of research, communication, and collaboration tools?

Wait, so AT&T and Comcast are efficient non-bureaucracies? Hahaha. Sounds like you've never worked for a big business.

Lets see, on top of all the handouts and monopolies they are granted they still cant build out capacity. In fact, the US is the world leader on filtering out and curbing torrent packets! So when the government FINALLY decides to move in and do something about it, we get more whining from slashdotters. Sigh.

I remember way back when (10-15 years ago), a certain Bill Clinton Administration passed a "Luxury Tax" on such things. The logic was that the rich will just keep buying these things even if they taxed them to death. Reality was that they had to rescind the tax when the workers for the companies making those thing lost their job. Not a single rich person lost their job. Taxes only hurt the poor, regardless of who you think you're punishing.

2) The Top of the economy buys things from the bottom of the economy, and hires them to service the rich.

The problem isn't the rich, in spite of Obama and the left. The poor will always be with us. Looking around here in the USA, Most of those called "poor" aren't really "poor", especially when compared to the truly impoverished in the rest of the world.

I care more about opportunity than I care about people being poor. Opportunity to succeed and be successful. To that end, each and every regulation government imposes limits the ability of one to succeed. True economic justice doesn't punish success (taxes, regulation), True economic justice means the little guy has as much opportunity to succeed as the big guys. Let me know when a true startup or small mom/pop company can make a car, without being regulated to death before they even start.

3) Economic Recovery can only happen when we start imposing the same restrictions on imported goods as found on goods produced in the US (or where ever you are). The reason we offshore is because there is economic advantage to. When we can't make electronics in the US because of environmental, worker safety, and wage laws make it non-feasible to do so, but China has no such problems, of course all of our stuff will be made in China.

AND as long as Walmart and others only want "cheap" goods, it will remain so. Neither the (R) or (D) understand this. Because both want more regulation.

And before you start saying "evil corporations", corporations are neither evil or good. They are built to make money for their owners, which often times are you (Stocks, bonds, pension funds, 401K etc). And you are buying their products. People are evil or good.

The overhead of private health insurers averages 35%. The overhead of Medicare is 3%.

The median tuition for their member private day schools in 2005-2006 in the United States was close to $14,000 for grades 1 to 3, $15,000 for grades 6 to 8 and $16,600 for grades 9 to 12. Public schools average cost per student is $13340, and they take everyone, including the very expensive special-needs kids.

The problem with government run programs is not that they're inefficient. They're nearly always more efficient, because they don't have to make profit, and culturally it's unacceptable for the chief officers to self-deal like US CEOs do.

The real problem with government programs is that they're inflexible and rarely innovative. Which means they should only be used for industries for which there is a known, steady, need: Libraries, Schools, Roads, Bridges, Power, Healthcare, a bare-minimum forced retirement savings program (Social Security). Everything else should be done privately.

Oh, I know. Taco did his snark, and you were modded +5 Insightful, because of the Republican/Libertarian cult of the CEO. But just remember that if you're ideology actually worked, Obama wouldn't have to be working so hard to bail us out of the economic mess you got us into.

Use that money to give cash payouts to the teachers (not the schools) whose kids have the greatest degree of improvement in their region, with "improvement" defined as a conrete metric. Here in Baltimore, for example, the city has a graduation rate of approximately 40%, and our literacy rate is also very low. Stupid investments in "broadband" and "computers" won't help these kids, but highly incented teachers just might. The teachers' unions would never stand for it (in fact they'd label it discriminatory), but you need highly skilled, motivated people to reach these kids on a one-on-one basis. If cash can attract the best folks for the job, I say go for it. They've tried everything else here for decades, including paying the students themselves for good grades, and nothing has worked.

Have them log into Monster.com, et al, and see what the salaries are for various fields, including jobs for those with a "mere diploma", and they will become more interested in College Prep and getting good grades.

So, we go from a guy who cuts taxes and then over-spends to a guy who won't cut taxes but still over-spends. Time will tell, but I have a feeling that Obama's spending will exceed Bush's, just as George "Smaller Government" Bush's exceeded Clinton's. I have a feeling Obama's will be roughly in proportion to the difference in their tax policies. I suppose this is an improvement. Kinda.

What will it take for the electorate to become too ashamed (or at least angry) to keep voting for these people? To paraphrase Penn Jillette, if we keep voting for the lesser of two evils and we're just going to keep getting evil.

I have to say, that us that did vote for Bush were fooled into thinking he was a conservative,

Well, if "conservative" to your means "smaller government and reduced spending, then Bush was not your man.

just as it seems many on the ultra-left have been fooled by Obama.

Odd. What I noticed in his campaign was continously repeated statements to the effect "look, I'm not a hard-left idealogue; I want to get people together and solve problems, not push an agenda." You're saying that the hard-left fooled themselves by ignoring what he actually was saying?

The war in Iraq was his main selling point throughout the primaries and most of the general, then he appoints people to his staff that will continue the course that has been set by Bush.

You seem to be predicting the future a little early. Where did you buy your crystal ball? I'm less concerned which people he's using then I am as to what he's going to use them to accomplish.

It seems more and more that us (Americans) have been being repeatedly fooled by Democrats and Republicans to believe that there is an actual difference in what they will actually do, but whenever either side gets elected, they just continue the status quo set by the previous administration,

Let's see, the last "previous administration," was the Clinton administration, which passed a budget reconciliation bill and actually balanced the budget. You know, if the Bush administration had actually continued that status quo, I'd be cheering him on.

When Obama announced that he was going to start the largest public works program since the Interstate system, I thought he might be talking about an interstate high speed rail network.

Though, after looking through his proposal, I don't see anything about high speed trains. I think a train network would kill many birds with one stone:

- it would provide a fast alternative to flying, which I hate.- it would cut down on carbon emissions since trains are much more efficient than cars or planes.- it could do for the country what the interstate system did in the last half of the last century.- it would create lots of jobs spread out across the country

Oh my Gosh. Here I am the most right wing guy on slashdot and I'm about to go and defend Obama's proposals for infrastructure spending in general, and national broadband and school computing in particular.

a. ubiquity creates new industries. If broadband is something nearly everyone has in the USA, then, you have a much easier time making a business case for a new kind of service. The USA has built railroads with federal help before, knowing that putting railroads would pump the economy, and it did. Then, roads did the same thing. Broadband won't be any different.

b. computers in schools works. Yes, a lot of kids play games on school computers but there will be those kids who are not as well off but interested in learning to program that will use them. I know I'm grateful to all the computer stores and schools back in the 1980s that let me learn programming in the lab and I think that there's other kids like me out there.

Note that I wouldn't restrict this to just computers. I would like to see schools have shop classes with real presses, CNC machines, and other tools of the art so that kids can get some hands on real things prior to joining the real world.

c. My stock retort to other conservatives that would oppose this government spending would be, you had no problem spending 2.5T on building schools and broadband in Iraq, but why can't you support that in the USA?

d. Hands on experience in computing and manufacturing is a national security issue. The USA needs to know how to manufacture its own goods. I would offer as exhibit A, World War II. It's handy for national security when you have a ton of manufacturing centers that can be quickly converted to produce for wartime needs. Indeed, has the USA had a better manufacturing base, maybe we wouldn't have had to wait for five years and four thousand dead to get decent armoured vehicles into combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By extension, those who pine for the old cold war days with Russian and for a stronger NATO should also be reminded that a part of our military obligation to our alliance partners is to have an economy capable of sustaining manufacturing in the event our allied economies are destroyed. It benefits Europe if the USA is capable of manufacturing its own products as that know-how can be shared with the continent.

So yeah, I think Obama's on the right track with a big infrastructure stimulus. I think Republicans would be better suited to argue what to build, rather than not to build at all, given that they already blew several times Obama's figure on rebuilding Iraq.

My wife is a HS English teacher in Washington state. If Obama want to seriously help schools, priority 1 should be to put a bullet in Bush's collossal screw up that is "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB). It's too flawed to "fix" other than flat out removal. Bush has been too stupid to admit it's a failure and correct it (just like everything else he's done), so this is the only option.

Next, in Washington state there's a bill called the Becca bill that requires the little monsters to be contained by the state in schools up until age 18 because some stupid brat ran away from school and got herself killed. Unfortunately, this also means that kids that would rather quit and go jockey a McRegister between times passing the bong are instead required to stay in school and suck up resources they don't care about. Get rid of this in Washington state (and similar laws in other states) and teachers can look the kids in the eye and tell them to leave and come back when (if) they care about learning something.Then, get back to helping the kids that are going to do something with themselves.

Last but not least, get rid of the stupid state teaching certificates in all 50 flavors. There's a shockingly fantastic National Board Certification (federal gov't too... go figure!) program that uses a peer evaluation system to focus teachers on becoming good teachers IN PRACTICE in their own environment. My wife did this certification and is now contributing to the mentoring portion. Interestingly enough, teachers who can't "reach these keeds" don't cut it in these programs because it requires them to learn, grow, and be self-reflective about how they teach and continue to grow, unlike the the rubber stamp Master's degree (a.k.a "Masters in Ed.") programs that set teachers up for either a check-mark in the "has masters" box and unwarranted pay raise or a future as yet another worthless administrator (and a MUCH greater unwarranted pay raise).

Bottom line, schools need more funding to train and retain good teachers. "Education" has a latin root word "educare" meaning "to bring out". It's not about throwing stuff at kids and hoping it sticks. It's about bringing out the best. You've never needed broadband or computers to do that.

Installing advanced broadband in schools and hospitals is similar to a plan being implemented in Canada for rolling out advanced broadband nationwide. (By advanced broadband, I mean gigabit or better, bidirectional.)

Connecting public facilities provides an infrastructure that can later be extended to homes and small businesses. New York State, under a project that involved Cornell University, either studied or actually implemented a multi-school-district network that allows enriched and advanced courses to be taught remotely that could not be justified for an individual school.

Broadband installation in hospitals enables telemedicine, in which expert remote consultation is available for difficult cases, and lays the groundwork for installing an advanced hospital information system network. Such a network would cut costs and improve performance in medicine. I've been told there are two excellent hospital information systems in existence, one developed by Kaiser and the other developed by the Veterans Administration and available as open source software.

Finally, someone is listening to what has been discussed for many years and is working to get it done.

--Salary budgets so we can have more than one specialist (Gym, Music, Art, reading) per 4 elementary schools. These specialists spend their lives going from one school to the next

--Librarians. Most in our district were 'let go' due to budgetary reasons and now parents/volunteers are doing the work. Parents/volunteers are no replacement for someone with 20yrs of experience as a librarian.

--Raises so we can live within 30miles of our school (same goes for Firefighters and Police officers).

I don't need computers when I'm teaching YOUR kids how to read and write, when I barely have enough for books and have to buy school supplies (dry erase markers, paper, binders) out of my own pocket.

Obama is talking about broadband because it's "Sexy". It wouldn't get any attention if he said, "I'm going to make sure all of our teachers have enough textbooks, paper and supplies to teach our kids how to read, write and do arithmetic." Why doesn't he say this, because schools are funded at the state level.... and the towns/states referendums for tax increases to pay for this equipment (books/pencils) are voted down, year after year. The only schools around here that have sufficient supplies are in the higher income towns because the parents are willing to donate $5000....

Maybe you should talk to your administration and union before asking ME for more money.

Why, in addition to my property taxes, do I have to provide a mandatory school supply list designed to keep the teacher in chalk AND kids who can't afford to buy their own crap? I give to charity in church. "charity" in public school is just a hidden tax.

Four years ago when my local school board was crying for more money, I attended one of their open hearings. I asked quite simply, have you done any auditing internal or external of current spending. The answer was 'no'. The referendum didn't pass. Yet, the darn fire department got their first new truck in 20 years (ok, 18, but still).

In exchange for higher pay, are you willing to work 8 hours a day doing community service in the summer? The union screamed high holy murder when this was suggested.

In summary, look in before out. You might find a more receptive crowd around election time if you can demonstrate real belt tightening and real reform efforts aimed at the primary mission of educating children instead of bureaucracy growing and union power building.

Of course, I know you specifically are not the root of evil, but as a poster child simply asking for more money is NOT the way to go.

This is the same argument folks in the US use to justify the lack of public transport.

The fact is that the US is 80% urban and suburban, so getting decent services to those folks (in both broadband and public transport) shouldn't be a problem. What is the problem, with internet connectivity anyway, is the deeply entrenched telecoms companies with their local monopolies.

I would take it a step further and allow local governments to lay the lines. We have public highways and roads. Why can't we have public fiber? I'm sure they could have some type of usage tax structure where the ISPs rent the public fiber and re-sell it.

Why can't we have public fiber? I'm sure they could have some type of usage tax structure where the ISPs rent the public fiber and re-sell it.

So the public would be taxed to pay for the city to lay the fiber, and then the increased tax on ISPs would be passed on to the same public to pay for service? This is your plan?

I have a better plan. If a company comes along and wants to lay parallel lines. Let them. Don't stop them in any way. Don't fine them. Remove all possible hindrances, anything that could turn them away. It'll start out small and slowly expand at the same time that the demand for cheaper service drives prices down. More and more people will have better and better service.

No, the city would lay fibre and then rent it out to service providers with a non-discriminatory policy to recoup costs. You don't need every company digging up the roads and disrupting everything, and you don't even want this since it adds massive barriers to entry for new ISPs - when you start, you may only have one or two customers in a neighbourhood and laying fibre to them is prohibitive unless you have massive up-front capital.

I have a better plan. If a company comes along and wants to lay parallel lines. Let them. Don't stop them in any way. Don't fine them. Remove all possible hindrances, anything that could turn them away. It'll start out small and slowly expand at the same time that the demand for cheaper service drives prices down. More and more people will have better and better service.

Sorry bud. The first time they tear up my street, I'll live with it. The second time, I'll bitch. The third time, I'll have my city passing a law banning parallel lines when there's existing fiber, and pushing for city maintenance of a common resource.

Some things just don't work when left to the free market. Now maybe my city doesn't need to do it; I'd be fine if my neighborhood association paid for the common fiber instead.

So the public would be taxed to pay for the city to lay the fiber, and then the increased tax on ISPs would be passed on to the same public to pay for service? This is your plan?

You think this would be more expensive than it is now? I pay for the cost for AT&T to lay the lines. Then I pay every month in increased costs because they have a monopoly. (Cable company here sucks; no HD yet and internet was lossy.) I'd love my city to lay fiber, then let ISPs compete to provide service over the common wire.

That's litte different than my electricity service, where the lines are owned by a regulated monopoly, but the suppliers compete on the free market.

The fact is that the US is 80% urban and suburban, so getting decent services to those folks (in both broadband and public transport) shouldn't be a problem.

Broadband, perhaps. For public transport, though, US cities and, particularly, suburbs are deliberately laid out in a way which is very good for individual transport via cars and very bad for public transit. This is not an accident, its a deliberate choice. You can't just overlay public transit on top of that and expect it to be efficient, you've got to

exactly. but i remember hearing a story in the late 90s about the guy who founded Qwest was heir to a railroad company or something. basically, he sold off all the land around the tracks except for a certain number of feet on either side of the tracks. the trains were then outfitted with something that would automatically lay fiber.

Not sure about trains outfitted with automatic fiber laying machinery, but I know about specially made train cars that lay fiber. The nice thing about railroads and fiber is that at the turn of last century, railroads were giving large swaths of right of way for running tracks from town to town. So the railroads usually connect towns together, the same towns that are perhaps wanting digital connectivity. Also, many lines used to have multi track routes, and these have been reduced to reduce maintenane an

No, I believe you basically heard correctly. I remember that being one of Qwest's competitive advantages at the time they got started. When everyone else was stuck negotiating for rights to use other people's land to place their fiber cabling, Qwest could usually just use the "right of way" land along the sides of the train tracks instead.

I think in the end though, it didn't change much of anything for the "end user/customer". Eventually, the big telcos all found ways to get things cabled up where they wanted to cable them up. Qwest might have gotten it done for less money initially, but they all have similar costs of operation and pricing models today.

IMHO, it's teacher's unions. The complete resistance towards standardized measures of their members' expertise in _doing their jobs_ is appalling, to say the least. Combine that with exorbitant retirement benefits weighing down on school budgets, and it's no wonder the current public schools can't do their job.

Want to reform education in this country? Take back the schools from the unions, or at least provide vouchers for school choice and competition.

To be honest, *private* school didn't help me. (I don't think I'm qualified to speak for everyone else who attended my school. I'm not that familiar with how the rest of their lives worked out for them.)

I attended a private school between 7th. grade and sophmore year of high school. Today, looking back, I can safely say those were 4 of the worst years of my life. The combination of faculty who insisted on running things in a fascist military style, while often doing a questionable job of teaching the material, plus the abundance of "spoiled, rich kids" did nothing for me. Switching to a public school, after MUCH begging and pleading to my parents, was the BEST move I made.

The school systems DO waste a lot of people's time and money. I just don't think it's always fair to single out "public schools" as the only problems. Private schools currently have the ability to make themselves look good "on paper" by refusing or kicking out anyone who doesn't help them keep an artificially good image. They also tend to hide behind their religious affiliations. (EG. "Come on now, Johnny. Your school can't be THAT bad! You're being taught by Catholic brothers!")

Growing up, I was greatly helped by the teachers in my public school. My third grade teacher for noticing how I aced the reading test and decided to give me the advanced reading test. I aced that one also. I credit her for putting me on a track where I enjoyed learning instead of being frustrated in school. It is quite possible that all of my success in life could be traced back to her in some form.

Since public school helped me, I guess your "never helped anybody" claim is false.

Please shut up. You have no clue what you're talking about. It's almost like you need an education. While education is part of the doctrinal system, the reality is that you have more chance of success at whatever you're doing whether the degree gets you a foot in the door or if you meet other people in your field and develop relationships. Even without all that, you typically make more money with a higher education. These facts escape you because you are too lazy to learn before speaking.

Almost every single technological breakthrough has occurred where? In government or university research labs funded by the state. You would not be typing on a computer and sending a message through the internet without it. The Human Genome Project was a government research program. Every time you take a flight you're riding in a modified bomber, researched with government funds.

So with all due respect, shut the fuck up. Really. Your ignorance is the problem, not spending money on education.

Ridiculous. You honestly think that every single person who went through the public school system is no better off than if they had received no education at all?

I went to a private elementary school, public high school, and public university. The public university was by far the most useful of the three. The other two are on roughly equal footing as "somewhat decent". They both wasted enormous amounts of time but they did provide some useful things in return.

Are you familiar with the term "false dichotomy"? Besides, using the obvious FDR comparison, the only way out of is war - the public works programs, contrary to what you read in your erroneous grade school textbooks, simply didn't work all that well in terms of recovery.

Instead, let's use the Japan comparison. In that case, we should do:3. Let all these firms fail, take the hit quickly, and move on.

The Japanese did:4. Never acknowledge you have a problem, let recession/stagnation go on for 10 years.

What the Second World War did for the U.S. economy was to turn the nation into a place of shortages and rationing-- food rationing, gas rationing, even tire rationing... a lot of things didn't have to be rationed, because nobody had money to buy things like new cars.

The one "good" thing that the war did for the U.S. was to give people a rationalization for the shortages and ration-coupons: they were sacrificing to win the war. The economy was terrible, but people felt good about scarcity, because it was for a cause.

Well, viewed generously, not until fairly late in the 1929-1933 recession, in the immediate wake of the 1929 crash he didn't do much, in 1930 he favored fairly moderate federal stimulus while asking state and local government to provide more stimulus, later he tried more significant stimulus (though still focussed on direct aid to capital with some public works), but the recession that started in 1929 didn't turn around until after Roosevelt began truly massive

Hoover Dam, anyone? You may want to check out The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes. She lists in detail with quotes the big spending projects of Hoover and FDR meant to stimulate the economy, and the result these projects had on the economy.

The Hoover Dam was first proposed, by Hoover, granted, in 1922 [wikipedia.org]. His predecessor as President, Calvin Coolidge, signed the bill authorizing it in 1928; it was never a depression recovery project per se, the money had already been allocated before there was a Depression.

Anybody here old enough to remember the candidates talking about what they were going to do with the budget surplus, back in 2000? Or is that just some forgotten ancient history? Surplus... what a concept!